Report details board’s animosity
Investigator describes discrimination against Howard County school staff
When Renee Foose stepped down last year as superintendent of Howard County schools, someone tied a “get well” balloon to her mailbox.
But the message had been altered: “Don’t” get well soon, her anonymous correspondent wished.
It was a token of the hostility seething beneath the surface of one of the highest-achieving and most lauded school districts in the nation.
After Foose resigned last May, the county Office of Human Rights found, her top deputies were refused appointments and barred from meetings. One was banished to a smaller office.
In reports obtained by The Baltimore Sun, human rights investigator Cheryl Brower wrote that she had found reasonable cause to believe some school board members discriminated against three of Foose’s chiefs: Tim Thornburg, director of staff relations; Grace Chesney, chief accountability officer; and John White, director of communications.
They were targeted for supporting her, Brower wrote, and in the cases of Chesney and Thornburg, for being gay. She noted evidence that two school board members had uttered homophobic remarks.
Chesney and White were laid off last June, a month after Foose left. Thornburg resigned that month.
“The BOE [Board of Education] engaged in behavior which a reasonable person would perceive as intimidating, ridiculing, demeaning, See SCHOOL, page 17